People come in a limitless variety of shapes and sizes. However, most clothing manufacturers do not manufacture a limitless variety of clothing sizes. In order to reduce manufacturing cost and increase productivity, most clothing manufacturers design clothes made to fit certain standard sizes and shapes. People who do not share the same physical parameters as the clothing manufacturers' standards are forced to buy clothing that may fit in one area, yet do not fit in another.
Compounding the frustration that people have with manufactured clothes is the fact that people often change shape before the life of their clothes expires. The change in a person's shape, due to diet, aging, pregnancy, or the like, makes people discard the clothes that once did fit properly and search for new clothing that better fit their new physique.
The most common physical attribute of a person that differs from the standards of the clothing industry is the waistline. It is also the waistline that is most likely to vary in size during a person's life. Consequently, it is often the waistline of a garment that does not fit a person's physique. Most commonly, a person's waistline is too large for a given standard size. In such a situation, the wearer would buy the next larger waist size, although the fit of the garment across the rest of the body may be oversized. Obviously, this problem is most prevalent with people who have waistlines that are unproportionally large when compared to their overall physique. Such people may have to purchase garments two to three sizes larger than is appropriate for their physique, just to find a proper sized waistband.
Fitting clothes to people having large or changing waistlines is not a new problem. Over the years, many types of apparel structures have been created that allow a waistline to be expanded to the size of its wearer. The most common approach to this problem is through the creation of elastic or otherwise resilient waistband. Some early examples of elastic waistbands are exemplified in U.S. Pat. Nos. 188,940 to Packscher, issued Mar. 27, 1877 and 360,979 to White, issued Apr. 12, 1887. Elastic waistbands are not appropriate for all styles of clothing and elastic waistbands cannot be easily added to existing clothing. Consequently, elastic waistbands offer only limited relief to people having rounded abdomens.
To avoid the appearance of an elastic waistband, removable elastic supports have been created within garments that are not visible, such as with U.S. Pat. No. 2,099,738 to Simpsom, issued Nov. 16, 1937. More typical in today's styles, to avoid elastic, is the use of the adjustably buttoned or snapped waistline. In such garments, the size of the waistline is determined by the positioning of overlapping sections of the waistline. Such garments are commonly used as maternity wear and are exemplified in U.S. Pat. No. 1,998,865 to Kekete, issued Apr. 23, 1935. Such specialty waistlines are specially manufactured and cannot be retrofitted onto existing clothing. Additionally, such expandable waistlines acted to merely increase the diameter of the waistline, and do not taper to fit the contours of a rounded abdomen.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to create an expanded waistband structure that is designed into new garments or retrofitted onto existing garments, allowing the waistline of a garment to be expanded and form-fit around contours of a wearer with a rounded abdomen.